STOCKHOLM, Sweden August 22, 2002 - Cisco Systems today announced that its technology will help enable the launch of a new residential telephone service by Bredbandsbolaget (B2), a next-generation Ethernet over fiber broadband provider reaching 220 000 households, which will provide a real alternative to the public switched telephone network (PSTN)-based calls in the residential market.
With this end-to-end residential voice service B2 will be offering a competitively priced, fully functional telephony service using Voice over IP (VoIP), to its existing customers, as well as to new customers outside its established ISP service.
B2 has opted to deliver calls over its Metro Ethernet broadband network using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a flexible communications standard developed for the Internet and providing a simple, stable and cost-effective platform that can be used to integrate new services such as unified messaging in the future.
B2's president and CEO, Peder Ramel, said: "As the acknowledged leader in the implementation of IP telephony and Metro Ethernet networks, Cisco was the obvious technical partner for us in this venture. Not only does their technology underpin our ability to offer 10Mbps Ethernet connections to residential customers, Cisco has demonstrated time and again that it can be trusted to help deliver mission-critical new services and applications."
B2's next-generation Metro Ethernet infrastructure, built around Cisco Catalyst 3500 Switches, Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switches and Cisco 12000 Series Internet RoutersCisco - Cisco 12000 Series Internet Routers, is being augmented to handle voice traffic with a Cisco SIP Proxy Server (CSPS), PGW2200 PSTN Gateway call control and Cisco AS5000 Series Gateways. The PGW2200 provides the SS7 interface to the Telia's PSTN network and interworks the SS7 circuit switched signalling to the VoIP SIP signalling. The CSPS provides the central call control, routing and location services for users on the network. Customers, meanwhile, will deploy Cisco Analogue Telephone Adaptors (ATA) so they can use their existing phones with B2's service.
John Baldwin, Head of Carrier Voice Solutions, Cisco Systems EMEA, said: "B2 has clearly seen that SIP is ready for mainstream deployment and can deliver traditional voice services as well new VoIP services. This is hardly surprising, SIP was designed for any kind of communication, from instant messaging to direct video, which also makes it is ideal for the kinds of integrated services B2 is contemplating in the future."
